The United Nations today announced the members of the Independent Panel of Experts tasked with examining new information related to the tragic death of former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and his party in September 1961.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Mohamed Chande Othman, the Chief Justice of Tanzania, to head the Panel.

The other two members are Kerryn Macaulay, Australia’s Representative on the Council of the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and Henrik Larsen, a ballistics expert at the National Center of Forensic Services in the Danish National Police.

The Panel, which will begin its work on 30 March 2015, will examine and assess the “probative value” of new information related to the death of Mr. Hammarskjöld and the members of the party accompanying him on an aircraft that crashed in what is today Zambia on the night of 17-18 September 1961.

Established by a General Assembly resolution adopted in December 2014, the Panel is expected to submit its report to the Secretary-General no later than 30 June 2015.

The Assembly, in its resolution, had also encouraged Member States to release any relevant records in their possession and to provide to the Secretary-General relevant information related to Mr. Hammarskjöld’s death.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=50337#.VQ1tGo7F-So

Did Western agents assassinate the UN Secretary General in 1961?: Four theories

By Philip Sherwell, New York and David Lawler, Washington

The Telegraph, 17 Mar 2015

As the UN reopens its investigation into the plane crash that killed Dag Hammarskjold, its second secretary general, some are pointing fingers at the United States and Europe

The United Nations has ordered a new investigation into the mysterious 1961African plane crash that claimed the life of its secretary general at a time of high international intrigue and intervention by outside powers as the post-colonial continent took shape.

The flight was carrying Dag Hammarskjold, the UN’s Swedish chief, on a high-stakes mission to negotiate with rebels in Katanga, a breakaway mineral-rich province of Congo that was backed by Belgian mercenaries and Western governments and business.

Pilot error was officially blamed after the DC6 plane carrying the UN’s second secretary general crashed into the bush, killing all 16 onboard, in the then British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).

But there were immediately competing theories that the plane had been shot down, possibly by American agents or European mercenaries, as Hammarskjold was believed to be about to broker a deal opposed by Western interests.

A commission of retired international judges in 2013 called for a new investigation after hearing "persuasive evidence" that the plane was shot down.

The UN has now announced that it is ordering a new review by an independent panel led Mohamed Othman, a Tanzanian jurist, and assisted by Kerryn Macaulay, an Australian aviation specialist, and Henrik Larsen, a Danish ballistics expert.

The team of experts is expected to travel to the crash scene. But for their mission to succeed, they will also need access to intelligence held by the US, Britain and other European states who have been urged to hand over the material.

More than five decades later, the new panel may be the last chance to determine what really happened to Mr Hammarskjold’s plane that night.

Theory #1: Pilot error

Evidence: The aircraft was flying overnight in central Africa at a low altitude. As John Mussell, the former Royal Rhodesian officer who coordinated the search for the plane, told the New York Times: “It doesn’t matter how fatigued you are or how experienced you are. If you are in Africa and going into unfamiliar territory, it’s not difficult to make a serious mistake.” There were three major enquiries after the crash, two were inconclusive and a third, by the Rhodesian government, blamed pilot error.

Counterpoint: Even back in 1961, that conclusion sounded a bit too convenient given Hammarskjold's powerful foes. Former president Harry Truman's take? “He was on the point of getting something done when they killed him," said Truman. "Notice that I said ‘when they killed him’.”

Theory #2: The Americans shot it down

Possible motive: When turmoil over land and minerals engulfed Congo, Hammarskjold sent UN troops to support Patrice Lumumba, the prime minister. President John F Kennedy was known to regard Lumumba as a destabilising force and a possible Soviet ally.

Evidence: Two American intelligence officials at stationed at listening posts on the night of the crash claim to have heard the plane taken down. One of them says he heard radio transmissions in which a voice said: "The Americans shot down the UN plane." The other says he heard someone say: "It's the plane.... I've hit it. It's going down."

Theory # 3: Mercenaries took down the plane on behalf of European industrialists (and perhaps with British help)

Motive: Hammarskjold did not just anger the Americans with his intervention in Congo. Even more incensed were European industrialists who stood to lose control of the country's mines.

A child digs for gold in a Congolese mine. Photo: Marcus Bleasdale

Evidence: According to the Guardian, two top aides to Hammarskjold were convinced that mercenaries had been hired to take out the plane, and that the British government aided in the ensuing cover-up.

Theory #4: A Belgian pilot shot the plane down 'by accident'

Evidence: Susan Williams, a British academic who wrote an in-depth account of the crash, wrote that a "Belgian pilot called Beukels" claimed to have shot the plane down "by accident" after it had failed to divert to a different landing strip.

Latest Comments

rebellb
I think Charles Manson and the Manson "Family" were a fascist conspiracy to make the hippies look bad. I suspect Manson himself was programmed. He had been in various prisons, where a lot of brainwashing occurs. While he likely learned mind control techniques there, he was also subjected to them. The film industry is involved in a lot of propaganda to get people to go along with the system. The Spahn Ranch was likely used in many of the Westerns that glorified the genocide of the Native Americans and programmed the minds of many people. Many people who got caught up in the Manson cult were vulnerable and naive people who were looking to escape the authoritarianism of their bourgeois families, but instead got taken in by this brainwashed brainwasher who pretended to be a hippie. The Spahn Ranch likely contained a lot of triggers that might have been used in programming the members of the Manson "Family".

Lyle Courtsal
This guy is not a Christian if he is sending vulnerable people to a stateless person status. A lot of rightwingers who think they're Christians ain't going to make. Remember, thou shalt not kill, by gun or budget cut.

Hank
Oh and further evidence of his being an agent provocateur is quoting an anti-pope of the new Vatican II pseudo-Christianity. It's pretty clear after the Judaeo-Masonic takeover of the Catholic Church with Vatican II that this fully controlled religious entity is being made to be the One World Religion of ecumenism, do as thou wilt and other satanic creeds. SHAME ON CONSTANTINE. I only need use the words of Archangel Michael: Lord rebuke you, alex constantine.

Lyle Courtsal
And I forgot about Luke Elliott Sommer and friends who exposed 65 torture centers mostly in Afghanistan. He came home and exposed them, then he and his associates did a bank job for running money. What most people don't understand is that once you violate a clearance, then they start gunning for you. They ran to Canada and then turned themselves in. Then of course there was the talk about how Sommer was going to use the money to start in the canadian ganja businessl weird how it was that when I posted additional information on wikipedia, it would vanish off the site in about a second. Type it in again and once again, the good stuff on the torture centers would vanish, but the garbage about the canadian pot business would still be there. Weird. . .